Party Comrades!

I thank you from my heart for the splendid and undeserved
reception which you have given me. I can only repeat here what I
already said in Zurich and Vienna*: I regard this reception not as
a tribute to me personally but to me as collaborator and ally of a
greater man, as the comrade-in-arms of Karl Marx, and in this
sense I accept it gratefully. You know that I am not an orator or a
parliamentarian; I work in a different field, chiefly in the study
and with the pen. And yet I would like to address a few words to
you. It is now almost fifty-one years to the day since I last saw
Berlin.*”’ Since then Berlin has been totally transformed. At that
time it was a small, so-called “royal seat” of hardly 350,000
inhabitants, living off the court, the nobility, the garrison and the
civil service. Today it is a great capital city with almost two million
inhabitants and lives off industry; today the court, nobility,
garrison and civil service could seek another home, and Berlin
would still remain Berlin. And the industrial development of
Berlin has brought about another revolution. In those days there
was not one single Social Democrat in Berlin; people did not even
know what Social Democracy was; a few months ago, the Social
Democrats of Berlin were passed in review, and mustered almost
160,000 votes,?” and Berlin has five Social-Democratic deputies
out of a total of six representatives. In this respect Berlin is at the
head of all the major European cities and has even outstripped
Paris by far.

a See this volume, pp. 404-07.— Ed.

Yet not only Berlin but the whole of the rest of Germany has
also undergone this industrial revolution. I have not been in
Germany for sixteen years.” As you know—for you have
personal experience of it—the Anti-Socialist Law has been in force
here since 1878, though happily you have now got rid of it. As
long as this law was in force I avoided coming to Germany; I
wished to spare the authorities the trouble of deporting me, which
they certainly would have done. (Amusement; cries of “They
certainly would have done!”) And now, on my present journey, I
have been able to see with my own eyes how splendid is the
turnabout that has taken place in Germany’s economic situation.
One generation ago Germany was an agricultural country whose
rural population comprised two-thirds of the total; today it is an
industrial country of the first order, and along the entire length of
the Rhine, from the Dutch border to the Swiss, I did not find a
single little spot where you can look around you without seeing
chimneys. Certainly, this seems at first sight to concern nobody but
the capitalists. But by expanding industry the capitalists are not
only creating surplus value, they are also creating proletarians;
they are destroying the petty-bourgeois and small peasant middle
classes; they are pushing the class antagonism between bourgeoisie
and proletariat to the limit; and those who create proletarians also
create Social Democrats. At every fresh election to the Reichstag,
the bourgeoisie is dismayed at the irresistible growth of the
Social-Democratic vote. They ask, “How does it come about?”
Well, if they had any sense they would surely see that it is their
own work! So it has come about that the German Social Democrats
are the most united, the most cohesive, the strongest in the whole
world, marching from victory to victory thanks to the calm, the
discipline and the good humour with which they conduct their
struggles. Party comrades, I am convinced that you will continue
to do your duty, and so I conclude with the cry: “Long live
international Social Democracy!”